Deputies Will Soon Send a Robot Into Harm’s Way : Law enforcement: Sheriff’s bomb squad will deploy the high-tech machine when confronted by potential explosive devices, hostage negotiations and toxic spills.

Detective Joe Braga was only inches away from a homemade bomb found above a stairwell at Newbury Park High School when he noticed the remote-control switch.

“Right there, I thought, he’s got me if he wants me,” said Braga, an eight-year veteran of the Sheriff’s Department bomb squad, which responds to all bomb-related calls in Ventura County. “On something like that you’re at the mercy of the builder of the device.”

Braga removed the sophisticated pipe bomb last September the way hundreds of other bombs have been handled in recent years: by delicately lassoing it with string and dragging it to a disposal trailer.

For years, the county’s bomb disposal experts have had to rely on such old-fashioned techniques in dealing with potential explosives.

But this month they plan to start using a new device that should give them a little more breathing room: a $120,000, 600-pound robot. The machine, named Andros Mark 5A, can X-ray suitcases, deactivate a live explosive or dispose of a pipe bomb.

The robot, which is equipped with video cameras and two-way communication, is also designed to wade into toxic spills, help police negotiate in hostage situations and even check for leaks in nuclear power plants.

“The purpose of the robot is to keep your personnel from going into the kill zone,” said Lt. Tom Convery of the Sheriff’s Department. Convery, who supervises the department’s bomb squad, is in Oakridge, Tenn., this week for final testing and training on the robot. Remotec, manufacturer of the device, is headquartered in Oakridge.

Shawn Farrow, a marketing representative for Remotec, said 250 models of the Andros Mark 5A have been sold to police departments in the U.S. and the military in the U.S., Great Britain and Spain.

The Board of Supervisors unanimously approved the purchase of the robot in February, five years after members of the bomb team said they first put in their request.

In the 24-year history of the Sheriff’s Department bomb squad, no deputy has been injured or killed handling explosives. But the dangers of the job and the importance of the robot, Convery said, were illustrated in February, 1986, when a pipe bomb killed two police bomb squad members in Los Angeles.

“I think we all re-evaluated how we did our work after that,” he said.

Although Los Angeles, Riverside and San Diego counties have had bomb robots for several years, Ventura County’s will be the first that is operational in the tri-county area. (Santa Barbara County inherited one several years ago, but it is in need of extensive repairs and has never been used.)

In Ventura County, the number of bombings, attempted bombings and hoaxes hit an all-time high last year. In three years, the number has nearly doubled, from 43 in 1989 to 80 in 1992.

Cliff Lund, director of the International Assn. of Bomb Technicians and Investigators, said that mirrors a national trend.

Nationwide, there were 2,989 bombings in 1992, up from 2,499 in 1991 and 1,582 in 1990. In 1992, bombings killed 57 people in the U.S. and injured 379.

Of all types of explosive devices, the use of pipe bombs has increased the most, he said. The number of pipe bombs discovered nationwide has increased 67% over a five-year period, jumping from 543 in 1987 to 815 in 1991.

Of California’s 475 bomb incidents in 1992, 182 involved pipe bombs. Lund said it’s no mystery why they’ve become more common. “It’s just the easiest thing you can manufacture.”

Since late February, the Ventura County squad has answered four pipe bomb reports in Ventura, including one bomb that went off inside a locker at Cabrillo Middle School.

Lou Martin, a Santa Barbara County sheriff’s detective and bomb expert, said books, magazines and TV shows such as “MacGyver” have helped teach youths how to build pipe bombs.

“It’s a fad right now,” he said. “It’s the in thing to make pipe bombs and impress your friends.”

On March 4, nearly a week after the deadly terrorist blast at the World Trade Center in New York, four teen-age boys allegedly placed a pipe bomb inside a locker at San Marcos High School in Santa Barbara. It was set to go off at 8:30 a.m., but a detonator wire jammed half an inch from making contact.

“If it would have gone off in that locker with somebody standing in front of it, we would be in court right now in a murder case,” Martin said.

The reason for the bomb: Two of the youths, who are brothers, told police they wanted an extra day off to go skiing with their father. Martin believes they decided to go forward with their plan after the World Trade Center bombing captured worldwide attention.

“Everybody was whipped up and frightened and scared about terrorism, and they used that opportunity to really scare the hell out of everybody at the high school,” Martin said.

Despite the increase in bomb-related incidents in Ventura County, answering those calls remains a part-time assignment. Each member of the bomb squad has a full-time job in the Sheriff’s Department.

Convery oversees construction of the new Todd Road county jail; Braga investigates property crimes in the unincorporated parts of the east county; Rod Thompson, one of the original members of the team, is a patrol sergeant in Ojai, and Paul Higgason is a crime prevention officer in Thousand Oaks.

They receive no hazardous duty pay and are on-call seven days a week, 24 hours a day. The county does indemnify them for $100,000 if they are killed.

Braga, who estimates that 80% of his time is spent on bomb work, thinks the county has reached the point where a full-time squad is needed.

“It just gets so busy it’s kind of ridiculous,” he said. “I don’t have the time to work on the cases like I should.”

To qualify for the bomb team, applicants must pass an oral interview, a psychological exam and a physical fitness test. Deputies who are selected become trainees until they are sent to a four-week FBI training course in Huntsville, Ala.

“None of us wants to be a hero. Somebody that wants to be a hero isn’t going to last very long doing this,” Convery said.

Braga applied for the job because “I was getting bored with normal police work.”

Thompson said his military experience made him interested in the assignment.

Even with the robot, the job is still guaranteed to bring moments of tension.

On the last day of April, for example, a suspicious package wrapped in newspaper was found in an air vent above a Thousand Oaks motel room, a location the robot would have been unable to reach, Convery said.

So Thompson crawled into the space and X-rayed the package. When the X-ray failed to reveal what was inside, he tied a string around the bundle and, with Convery, rigged a pulley system across the parking lot of Motel 6.

“If I find I’m not anxious, it’s time for me to get out of it,” Thompson said. “That’s a healthy thing to happen. It makes you think, it makes you cautious.

“You never know when something can go terribly wrong.”

After the package was pulled from the room, it was loaded into the bomb disposal trailer and driven to Camarillo Airport for analysis.

After Thompson and Convery gingerly disassembled it employing methods they won’t discuss, the contents of the package were revealed: several dirty socks and a pair of nylons.